How scores work
A score here is what a group of people thought about one quality of one footballer. This page is the whole method, including the parts that are less flattering to us.
The scale is 1 to 10
Every question asks about a single quality — finishing, leadership, creativity — and offers ten chips. 1 = not at all · 10 = perfect. There is no zero and there are no halves. A zero is not an opinion, it is a way of saying nothing at all, and it would drag an average further than any real opinion can.
Every quality is worded so that a 10 is a compliment. We do not host qualities that make an accusation, and there is no way to mark somebody down as a person: there is no overall score for a footballer, only a score for one quality at a time.
You have one rating per footballer per quality. You can change it — the new number replaces the old one rather than being added to it.
The score is an average
The Worth A 10 Score is the mean of every rating given for that footballer and that quality, to one decimal place. It never appears on its own: it is always shown with the number of ratings behind it, because an 8.7 from 24 people and an 8.7 from 24,000 are not the same claim, and a number that hides its sample size is asking to be believed on trust.
In this test nothing is weighted. Every rating counts exactly the same as every other, and the number you see is the plain average. If that ever changes, this page changes with it.
Below the threshold there is no score
Until enough people have rated a question, no score is shown. Not a zero, not a placeholder, not a greyed-out number with a warning beside it. A handful of ratings is not a result, and putting one on the screen would be inviting you to believe a number we do not believe ourselves.
That is the whole of it: how many people have rated, and how many more are needed. There is no distribution either — a chart drawn from nine ratings is a picture of nothing.
Your own rating is always shown, even when the score is locked. Nothing you enter is thrown away because the crowd has not caught up.
Preliminary, Established, High-confidence
Once a score is shown it carries one of three labels, which describe how much evidence is behind it:
- PreliminaryUnder 100 ratings
Enough to show, not enough to lean on. A score at this size can move a long way on a quiet afternoon.
- Established100 ratings or more
Settled enough that one strong opinion no longer shifts it.
- High-confidence1,000 ratings or more
As firm as an opinion gets. It still describes what people think, and people change their minds.
The label describes the sample, not the footballer. A high-confidence 4.2 is a well-evidenced low opinion, not a badge.
What the percentile means
After you rate, you may see a line like You rate them higher than 64% of voters.
It compares your number with everybody else's for that same question. Your own rating is left out of the comparison — counting yourself would flatter the figure — and people who chose exactly your number count on neither side, which is why the two directions do not add up to 100. When everybody else picked the same number as you, there is no honest sentence to write, so the line is left off rather than padded out.
It places you. It does not score you. There is no right answer to any of these questions and nothing about where you sit is recorded as good or bad.
Aggregated public opinion, not a statement of fact.
That line sits under every score on this site, and it is meant literally. A score summarises what a group of people thought on the days they were asked. It is not a measurement, it is not a fact about the footballer, and it is not our view of them. Opinion moves, and the number moves with it.
It is also why there is no overall score for a person. Each score is about one quality, because “is he a 7?” is not a question anybody can answer.
What we do not do
We do not invent people and we do not invent opinions. Every rating counted in this study's results was given by somebody who was invited to take part. Nobody can buy a score: there are no advertisers and no sponsors here, and nothing about a footballer's number is for sale.
One thing we do that is worth stating plainly. Before invitations went out, every question was given a starting set of ratings, so that a score exists to be shown. Without them almost everybody's first rating would have met a locked screen, and what happens after you see a score is exactly what this study is trying to find out. Those starting ratings count towards the number on the screen, they are recorded as what they are, and they are excluded from the study's own results.
If you change your mind about taking part, your ratings are deleted and every score you contributed to is worked out again without them — leaving is as easy as joining. You can do it from the withdraw page.